By Albert Amateau
Club owners and elected officials said bars will have better safety and a more law abiding environment because of a new Best Practices guidelines published last week. But some community board and neighborhood representatives said they were left out of the year-long consultation between the N.Y.P.D. and owners that resulted in the 58-point guidelines.
The guidelines came after the murders last year of Imette St. Guillian, a Soho bar customer, and Jennifer Moore, a west Chelsea club patron, prompted the formation of a police-nightlife working group.
Last year, anticipating some features of the guidelines, the city passed new legislation setting standards for club security guards and requiring clubs to install surveillance cameras at entrances and exits. Club owners, however, are not subject fines for violating the new guidelines, announced Oct. 18, but their representatives have pledged to follow them.
“The Best Practices for the city’s nightlife establishments will ensure that New York remains the safest large city in America, both before and after dark,” City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who last year convened a council nightlife security summit and sponsored legislation on club security legislation in the wake of the murders, said in a joint statement with Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and New York Nightlife Association President David Rabin. “These recommendations provide clear guidelines for bars, clubs and for the police that will lead to safe nightlife industry standards.”
However, Susan Stetzer, district manager of Community Board 3, where bars and nightlife are a frequent cause for complaint in the East Village and the Lower East Side, said “no one from the working group or the council spoke to us about the guidelines.” Stetzer said it appeared that the Best Practices primarily applied to large clubs rather than the smaller bars most common in District 3.
“Ironically, one of the people on the Best Practices working group is connected with BLVD, a large club at 199 Bowery, where we’ve had a lot of complaints in the recent past,” Stetzer said.
David McWater, chairperson of Community Board 3 and the owner of several East Village bars, also said he was not consulted. He had resigned from the New York Nightlife Association after he became chairperson of the Community Board in 2004 to avoid a possible conflict of interest.
In the East Village and the Lower East Side, the problem has long been crowds in the streets from many small bars concentrated in a block or two.
“No one that I know — from the council or the Nightlife Association – has asked us to contribute or review this,” said Zella Jones, president of the Noho Neighborhood association.
Councilmembers Rosie Mendez and Alan Gerson, whose districts include the East Village and Lower East Side, did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
The guidelines are essentially intended to make the inside of an establishment safer and only incidentally refer to the areas outside of a bar. “Important evidence may exist inside the establishment even if the crime occurs outside and therefore there will be circumstances where the best practices apply to incidents that take place outside,” the guidelines say.
Nevertheless, the recommendations do say, “All those awaiting admission should be placed in a line not blocking the sidewalk. All individual on admission lines should be informed that if they are not orderly they will not be admitted.” The guidelines also say that “at closing, security is to secure orderliness when patrons are exiting the establishment.”
Best Practices for security guards call for one guard for every 75 patrons present and an additional guard for every 75 additional patrons. The guidelines also call for one security supervisor for every five guards. Some Downtowners say the new regulations will have little effect on the smaller bars that are problems.
The guidelines include a model Incident Report intended to assist nightlife managers, security guards and police in obtaining information necessary to the investigation of a serious incident.
Kelly said the N.Y.P.D. would schedule several one-day training session for club managers and security people on the best practices for crime prevention, how to detain witnesses, how to respond to violence including sexual assaults and how to defuse potential violence.
About 400 police officers routinely assigned to the club and bar beats in Chelsea, the Village, East Village, Soho and Midtown and areas in other boroughs have already attended all-day training sessions on legal and practical issues and on the role of the State Liquor Authority in maintaining a safe bar environment, Kelly said.
Robert Bookman, counsel to the Nightlife Association, welcomed the recognition by police that club owners and managers should not automatically be given Disorderly Premises summonses, regardless of whether club management was at fault in an incident. Summonses for Disorderly Premises often lead to liquor license suspension or revocation. “It made managers afraid to call police in appropriate situations,” Bookman told The Villager.
The recommendations say “The Police Department has issued an order clarifying the circumstances under which a summons may be issued for disorderly premises and we are holding precinct commanders accountable for ensuring that these summonses are properly issued.”
Lisa Daglian, co-chairperson of the Community Board 4 business licenses committee, said, “We have been concerned about bars and clubs being good neighbors and we hope the guidelines will apply to neighborhood bars as well as big clubs.”
The Board 4 district covers Chelsea where clubs that can accommodate hundreds of patrons are clustered on the west side of the district.
Nevertheless, Daglian said the guidelines “look like a great idea so far.” The pledge that police would not automatically issue a ticket for disorderly premises to clubs that call police was very important, she said.
“No one should be afraid of calling police if they need to,” Daglian said. “Club owners will be a lot less reluctant now to call police.
Brad Hoylman, chairperson of Community Board 2, which covers the Village and Soho, said, “The Best Practices recommendations really establish a new set of guidelines for the board to judge an application for a liquor license or a renewal – it’s a new standard for the board. It puts operators on notice as well as the community board that we have to co-operate more in the future.” Community boards are required to review applications to the State Liquor Authority and while the board recommendations are strictly advisory, they are frequently influential.
Hoylman said one point that invites bar and club managers and owners to attend regular monthly police precinct community council meetings was an import feature of the Best Practices recommendations. He said precinct councils and community boards should co-operate more. “The precinct community council could teach us a lot and the board could teach the council a lot too,” he said.
Community Board 2’s district also includes the Gansevoort Market district where bars clubs and restaurants have become a dominant presence.
The working group that drew up the guidelines with police includes Rabin, who owns Lotus in the Gansevoort Market; Mitchell Banchik, of Mo’s Caribbean on the Upper East Side; Shawn Kolodny of Pink Elephant in west Chelsea; Sandra Wright, of Whiskey Ward on the Lower East Side; Paul Seres of SOL, a west Chelsea Club, Edward Brady of BLVD, a lounge on Bowery and Charles Hunt of the New York State Restaurant Association.
